Page 60 of Inherting the Mafia

I didn't see how he couldn't be, but I did trust him and I'd seen him to amazing things. I was terrified that in this case he was wrong, but if I didn't trust him now, I was pretty sure I was going to lose him.

Might anyway.

"What do you need me to do?" I asked.

"Give me five minutes and then come down to the gate."

I swallowed tightly. I had no idea what his plan was, but he seemed confident in himself. I had to be, too. "Five minutes. Not a second more."

I had to be as crazy as he was.

Tony beamed at me, leaned in to press a kiss to my lips, and then hurried out the front door. I closed my eyes for a moment and prayed with everything in me that his planned worked and he came back to me unscathed.

"Where'd Tony go?" Luca asked as he reached me.

I opened my eyes and let out a big sigh. "You don't want to know."

I glanced at my watch to note the time and then walked out to stand on the front steps. I easily spotted Tony running through the yard, but he was headed to the corner of the property, not the main gate.

"What is he doing?" Luca asked just about the time Tony leapt over a bush, jumped toward the fence, and then climbed up the tall fence like he was Spiderman.

I'd never seen anything like it.

"I have no idea," I replied. "He said to come down to the main gate in five minutes."

I just hoped he was still breathing when I got there.

When Tony disappeared over the top of the stone fence I thought my heart was going to leap right out of my chest. It took every bit of control I had to stay standing where I was and not go running after him.

The waiting was agony.

When a lot of shouting erupted from the other side of the fence, Luca jerked and then started for the stairs. I quickly grabbed his arm. "Five minutes is not up."

Luca looked at me as if I was crazy, and maybe I was, but Tony said five minutes and I was going to give him those five minutes.

I glanced at my watch. Two minutes to go.

"You're not even going to go check?"

"I trust Tony," I stated no matter how much I wanted to go check.

"There are several carloads of armed men over there. What can he do? He's a single man. He's going to get himself killed."

I really wished Luca would shut up. I already had a million bad images running rampant through my brain. I didn't need him to be adding to them.

When a gunshot rang out, I forgot about my promise to Tony, only concerned with getting to him as quickly as I could. I raced down the steps and then ran as fast as I could toward the gate.

Five minutes be damned.

When I reached the gate, Luca was right there with me. He pulled out his gun and then gestured to the guard. "Open the gate!" he shouted.

"My five minutes aren't up," someone shouted from the other side of the gate. It sounded a lot like Tony.

Fuck the five minutes.

"Open the gate!" I shouted as loudly as Luca had.

The gate opened so slowly I wanted to scream. When I finally saw the scene on the other side, I felt paralyzed, unable to move a single muscle.

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